Pallets are said to move the world. Eighty percent of commerce ships on pallets. The pallet industry is estimated at greater than $30 B worldwide. More than 500 million pallets are manufactured in the US each year, with 1.8 billion pallets in service in the US alone. Pallets can be made from various materials, however wood pallets currently comprise about 80% of the market. More than 40% of worldwide hardwood lumber currently goes toward the manufacturing of wood pallets. Other materials used for pallet manufacturing include plastic, metal and corrugated paperboard.
Recent regulations regarding infestation and contamination are creating a surge in interest and use of non-wood pallet alternatives. A small, but fast growing segment is the use of corrugated paperboard pallets. Many desire to replace conventional wooden pallets with corrugated pallets for reducing costs, increasing ability to recycle, lowering pallet weight, eliminating product contamination, reducing pallet storage volume and reducing pallet related injuries.
Many different designs of corrugated paperboard pallets have been developed to date. Despite the potential advantages of corrugated pallets, many have suffered from several different deficiencies. These deficiencies include low strength and stiffness, high use of corrugated paperboard, resulting in higher material costs, warehouse space, assembly labor and freight costs. The inherent inability to readily produce and distribute corrugated pallets in sufficiently high volume has also been a critical factor in the commercial failures of almost all prior art corrugated paperboard pallets.
In some applications, material handing is conducted using stacker type forklifts that have front roller forks as well as lifting forks. Stacker forklifts have the advantages of being smaller and more maneuverable than conventional type forklifts, and are lower cost. Unfortunately, the front roller forks preclude the use of pallets or other load-supporting platforms having a bottom deck.
Accordingly, a new corrugated skid is needed that can be easily and rapidly produced that uses the minimal amount of corrugated board, is strong and lightweight, and is fully recyclable, so it can be used once and then recycled. This would eliminate the costly reshipment of used pallets or skids back to the shipper, and would also eliminate the problems of contamination and infestation. The light weight of such a novel skid would greatly reduce the shipping costs of goods, particularly in the case of air shipments, at an overall cost significantly less than the use of conventional pallets and skids, even those made of corrugated material. Ideally, such a novel skid could be shipped to a user in the form of stacks of flat blank that could be rapidly assembled as needed at point of use without the need for large volumes of storage space to accommodate assembled pallets or skids.